I had pretty much the same reaction. Except not only is $foo\Q[bar] UGLY, it's bloody confusing looking. I've always tried to distance myself from the argument about how much of perl looks like line noise (regexp's anyone?), but this is definitely a step in the WRONG direction for clarity and lack of line noise, despite the apparent planned elimination of $", $[, and their ilk.
You know, it's kinda hard to balance that laptop on the sink when I'm in the john.
Books don't require batteries that might run down, or suffer from any of a dozen other complaints against the "true portability" of electronic systems for getting documentation.
If you're happy with phosphors, more power to you, but if I want a reference, I want one that is as portable as I am; one without leashes to the power grid (even if they're only intermittent), and one with some editorial intelligence up front to filter down to the topics I care about, rather than a kitchen soup like the web where I have to sift through 10000 google hits to find the page that really answers my question.
But couldn't you just make it so the data store is the portable part? So a given site makes a large investment in the laser emplacement to read one of these, and you put your data in it and take it with you to another such site. This isn't how data warehouses are used today, but I'm sure some enterprising use could be found for this (personal pr0n collections anyone? Heh.)
Note the key phrase three-dimensional. In the literal language of patents, there is nothing three-dimensional about today's
flat-monitored FPS games
Um... not to quibble, but if this is really what they mean, then what is the POINT of the patent, since only a relatively miniscule few displays are capable of generating three-dimensional output. They *DO* definitely use three-dimensional modelling, which is how I would interpret the wording.
That was the point of saying "they also take the responsibility for managing those risks, and can't whine to the government to bail them out". The person who damages property or people by driving drunk should lose either their rights to drink or their rights to drive for some period that is commesurate with the damage done. If they kill someone, they should lose the relevant right permanently.
It's worth noting that there are plenty of people who have the opportunity to make informed (or not) decisions about things that can impact you today--cars are probably one of the best examples; nothing stops other people with cars from harming you pretty seriously, aside from responsibility, either enforced through licensure or through penalties for being irresponsible.
All of that said, I don't think that providing assistance to people who request help breaking addictions necessarily qualifies as the government bailing them out, unless they request it repeatedly (at which point, again, rights to participate in the activity that leads to their problem need to be curtailed).
I think that this does the least to curtail any given person's freedom while they are able to exercise their freedom responsibly, and allows for means to deal appropriately with those who show they cannot exercise their freedom responsibly.
There is no way that you can a priori force anyone to behave responsibly or in an informed way, and making substances illegal only guarantees that those who use them are LESS likely to be responsible people. If your friends want to break their nicotine addictions, then there should be means to assist them with that, but if they choose to start smoking again after that, then it's their problem to deal with. And if that addiction were significantly dangerous to others around them, then there should be a means to make certain they can't get back off the wagon or harm people while off the wagon (licensing to purchase controlled substances or licensing to do whatever that dangerous activity is; in the case of drunk driving licensing to drive is the easy and in-place means).
An AC wrote: The vast majority of Americans have mature sensibility, the only groups that don't are the libertarians and a small group just a little
left of reasonable.
So *that's* why we have such magnificently mature entertainments as "Married with Children", "Survivor", and the Howard Stern Show: the libertarians are in control of everything! How silly of me to not notice that the constitution was actually being honored to the letter.
There is no non-abusive way to recreationally use illegal substances
So on December 4, 1933 it was abuse to drink a beer, but the next day it wasn't (for the record, the 5th was the day the 21st amendment repealing prohibition was ratified)? What *rational* difference was there between the beer and the chemical and behavioral reactions it caused in the person drinking it between the two days? Oh wait, "illegal". Sorry, I've been using the terms "use" and "abuse" by their common meanings, not their ultra-hyper-legalized meanings. In my world use means taking the drug, and abuse means taking the drug to excess and/or in a way that endangers others.
If the veracity of your personal account is irrelevent, then why did you use it as an example?
Because it is the example I am most able to explain. Just because you don't seem to believe me (and in fact go on to define it as irrelevant to you) doesn't mean it's not useful to hang the discussion on.
repeatedly inducing himself into a hallucinogenic stupor...
You obviously have made up your mind on the issue, why are you bothering to discuss it with anyone who disagrees with you? You also have little or limited experience with the range of people who enjoy these substances if you think everyone is "in a stupor" or seeking a stupor. And I presume from your attitude that you're just as disapproving of alcohol use (I gotta say alcohol leads to a lot more stupor than I've ever seen in anyone taking acid, as one example), but somehow it doesn't seem like you're arguing that we should return to alcohol prohibition. What exactly is your point then? That you're comfortable with the hypocrisy of saying "use == abuse" just because a group of old white guys in Washington define it that way?
I never said anything about abusing drugs. I've abused (and been abused by) alcohol, but of course nobody cares about that. My use of pot and lsd was more than just "casual use", but it was not abuse in any sense that makes sense (I didn't skip out on work to do them, I didn't do crimes to get them, I didn't "have" to have them to get my day going, I didn't do them without regard for possible consequences--i.e. made sure I was not driving or doing other things that would harm anyone around me). You can't just say "use == abuse"; that's the same as "all sex is rape" and just as credible.
Furthermore, it's worth noting whether I *personally* am telling the truth or not, the fact that there are people who are not juvenile idiots who do find drugs fun was what I was trying to get at.
If you want to say that "use == abuse" and "all users are juvenile by definition" then get it over with so we don't waste time responding to you.
So I'm not a juvenile idiot (as evidenced by the fact that despite having "experimented" pretty liberally with pot and LSD at certain times in my life, I am not dead and not in jail), why should my toys be taken away? Just because Johnny Dumbass might be jealous that I still have my toys?
I keep seeing this. Are *drugs* really the problem, or is the combination of drugs and the American eternally juvenile sensibility the problem? Drugs in combination with the drug war, perhaps?
I would like one person to actually articulate, without being insulting, without assuming that because a particular person is stupid and can't control his/her intake or know their limits that NONE of the rest of us can, what the "problem" is.
My experience is that alcohol is significantly harder to manage sensibly than marijuana or LSD. My personal research indicates that heroin and cocaine have risks associated that I will not tolerate, but they aren't as bad (in the ways commonly described) as the scare-mongers would have us believe--the risks in particular that I can't abide are ones that aren't commonly discussed.
Nonetheless, there were times in history where all these things were legal, and we have data to show that people were able to deal with their effects or can be left to pay the price for not dealing with them, so I don't see where the problem is.
The point? The way to use anything is with full disclosure of all the known risks and what can be done to mitigate them. If you find the benefits (which can be completely intangible) worth the risk, and you made an informed choice to take that risk, then you should be allowed to make the choice. (It's also worth noting that you then take the responsibility for dealing with said risks, and shouldn't come whining to Daddy Government to help you if you get bitten).
That said, the comparison to tobacco isn't very relevant, since the corporate powers that be have gone far out of their way to hide the risks. Any legalization effort should be made with the understanding that FULL information be provided about the substance in question, not just marketing crap.
I think it has less to do with centuries of one drug over another, and more to do with centuries of recreational escape from reality. While there are particular differences from one to another, the overall drive to alter consciousness is not going to change any time soon. Personally, if I had the choice between a joint and a beer, legally, I'd pick the joint (or better yet, an equivalent I didn't have to smoke), because back when I was ignoring the law I found that the hangover from pot was a lot easier on my body than the one from alcohol (i.e. almost non existent aside from being a little fuzzy headed).
I think that having learned how to handle one intoxicant (alcohol), you're pretty much ready to handle the others, as long as you have good information on how the effects differ, i.e. duration, symptoms, etc. Perhaps harder drugs or psychedelics need a different approach, but pot is ultimately very similar to alcohol overall.
If you are going to say things are bad because of their physical effects, then you need to be consistent. Alcohol is MUCH worse in terms of "killing neurons" than X. As far as it goes, there are plenty of legal substances that kill neurons, and that's not being used to justify making any of them illegal. Hell, aging kills neurons. It's not a matter of "whitewash", it's a matter of me saying "so what".
As for psychological addictions, let's see...cocaine...was widely accepted (despite some really major real dangers like the complete unpredictability of the effect of the same dose on the same person at the same purity on two different days; hey look, real medical facts!) for some time. But then we got cheap cocaine in the form of crack. There is NO chemical difference between crack and powder cocaine; crack is simply a concentrated form (you know, like those little frozen orange juice containers?). So in order to make it seem like it was SO MUCH WORSE the drug warriors started babbling about how addictive it was--in fact, cocaine is not addictive in the normal sense of alcohol & heroin, where you physically have to have it just to function "normally" once addicted, and crack is no more addictive than powder. Hence "psychological addiction" being used to justify the much more severe penalties for something that was the same drug.
As far as alcohol being "psychologically addictive", you obviously don't know what you're talking about, because alcohol is "physically addictive" not psychologically addictive. Your body comes to crave it and need it, and if it's withdrawn once your addiction is set, you have physical sickness (aka DT's etc) because of this.
I've read more about this topic, including the previous recommendations and medical and legal reviews of the facts than you seem to have bothered with.
You might note that I did not contradict you and claim that X doesn't destroy brain cells. Perhaps if you read something besides drug war propaganda (we return to the "lies, damn lies, and drug war statistics" comments) you'd be able to recognize when the medical journals are being influenced by hysteria instead of science. Here's another book for you: "Marihuana Reconsidered" by Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a respected Harvard Medical Researcher who set out to prove how bad pot was, and then found out it wasn't so bad after all. Hm, I wonder if we could do real unbiased research on X we might find that it's not so horrible either (even though it kills brain cells just like aging does)? Nah, that's just a pipe dream.
Of course I can filter pot just like people filter tobacco, and suddently it's not so cancerous. Or I can bake pot into brownies and other interesting food, and not take any smoke into my lungs at all. THC is not cancer causing.
I'm curious about your definition of "prove", and what specific statistics you're talking about. I'm sure your familiar with the quote about "lies, damn lies, and statistics". Given that the data I've seen indicate that drug consumption overall (including ALL drugs like alcohol etc) is pretty independant of drug war efforts, I'm skeptical about your "statistics" that claim to "prove" anything.
That argument doesn't hold much weight, given that alcohol is more toxic to the brain than most other illegal drugs.
Also, it's worth noting that "psychological addiction" is a ridiculous bogeyman brought forward to justify draconian measures against drugs that couldn't otherwise be demonized very effectively. Hell, I'm "psychologically addicted" to chocolate, and it certainly doesn't do my health much good to scarf down a whole pint of Godiva Belgian Dark Chocolate ice cream in one sitting, but I haven't heard anyone screaming for the prohibition of that.
Please get some clues (there are a number of excellent books on these topics, in particular "Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do" by Peter McWilliams and "The Case for Legalizing Drugs" by Richard Lawrence Miller) before continuing to demonstrate your ignorance.
Slashdot Mirror
So what? It's still confusing as hell, and does not read cleanly. It seems there must be a better way to clarify what he's trying to get at.
I had pretty much the same reaction. Except not only is $foo\Q[bar] UGLY, it's bloody confusing looking. I've always tried to distance myself from the argument about how much of perl looks like line noise (regexp's anyone?), but this is definitely a step in the WRONG direction for clarity and lack of line noise, despite the apparent planned elimination of $", $[, and their ilk.
Books don't require batteries that might run down, or suffer from any of a dozen other complaints against the "true portability" of electronic systems for getting documentation.
If you're happy with phosphors, more power to you, but if I want a reference, I want one that is as portable as I am; one without leashes to the power grid (even if they're only intermittent), and one with some editorial intelligence up front to filter down to the topics I care about, rather than a kitchen soup like the web where I have to sift through 10000 google hits to find the page that really answers my question.
Not to be a stickler for facts or anything, but the movie premiered in 1968. I'm thinking it was written before that.
But couldn't you just make it so the data store is the portable part? So a given site makes a large investment in the laser emplacement to read one of these, and you put your data in it and take it with you to another such site. This isn't how data warehouses are used today, but I'm sure some enterprising use could be found for this (personal pr0n collections anyone? Heh.)
What the hell are they using Windows for then?
Um... not to quibble, but if this is really what they mean, then what is the POINT of the patent, since only a relatively miniscule few displays are capable of generating three-dimensional output. They *DO* definitely use three-dimensional modelling, which is how I would interpret the wording.
So sorry, I forgot that all-important "alleged" before lawbreakers. Can't you let me flame people's spelling in peace?
It's worth noting that there are plenty of people who have the opportunity to make informed (or not) decisions about things that can impact you today--cars are probably one of the best examples; nothing stops other people with cars from harming you pretty seriously, aside from responsibility, either enforced through licensure or through penalties for being irresponsible.
All of that said, I don't think that providing assistance to people who request help breaking addictions necessarily qualifies as the government bailing them out, unless they request it repeatedly (at which point, again, rights to participate in the activity that leads to their problem need to be curtailed).
I think that this does the least to curtail any given person's freedom while they are able to exercise their freedom responsibly, and allows for means to deal appropriately with those who show they cannot exercise their freedom responsibly.
There is no way that you can a priori force anyone to behave responsibly or in an informed way, and making substances illegal only guarantees that those who use them are LESS likely to be responsible people. If your friends want to break their nicotine addictions, then there should be means to assist them with that, but if they choose to start smoking again after that, then it's their problem to deal with. And if that addiction were significantly dangerous to others around them, then there should be a means to make certain they can't get back off the wagon or harm people while off the wagon (licensing to purchase controlled substances or licensing to do whatever that dangerous activity is; in the case of drunk driving licensing to drive is the easy and in-place means).
Many of us are persecuted under US law, but only lawbreakers are Prosecuted under US law.
So *that's* why we have such magnificently mature entertainments as "Married with Children", "Survivor", and the Howard Stern Show: the libertarians are in control of everything! How silly of me to not notice that the constitution was actually being honored to the letter.
So on December 4, 1933 it was abuse to drink a beer, but the next day it wasn't (for the record, the 5th was the day the 21st amendment repealing prohibition was ratified)? What *rational* difference was there between the beer and the chemical and behavioral reactions it caused in the person drinking it between the two days? Oh wait, "illegal". Sorry, I've been using the terms "use" and "abuse" by their common meanings, not their ultra-hyper-legalized meanings. In my world use means taking the drug, and abuse means taking the drug to excess and/or in a way that endangers others.
If the veracity of your personal account is irrelevent, then why did you use it as an example?
Because it is the example I am most able to explain. Just because you don't seem to believe me (and in fact go on to define it as irrelevant to you) doesn't mean it's not useful to hang the discussion on.
repeatedly inducing himself into a hallucinogenic stupor...
You obviously have made up your mind on the issue, why are you bothering to discuss it with anyone who disagrees with you? You also have little or limited experience with the range of people who enjoy these substances if you think everyone is "in a stupor" or seeking a stupor. And I presume from your attitude that you're just as disapproving of alcohol use (I gotta say alcohol leads to a lot more stupor than I've ever seen in anyone taking acid, as one example), but somehow it doesn't seem like you're arguing that we should return to alcohol prohibition. What exactly is your point then? That you're comfortable with the hypocrisy of saying "use == abuse" just because a group of old white guys in Washington define it that way?
Furthermore, it's worth noting whether I *personally* am telling the truth or not, the fact that there are people who are not juvenile idiots who do find drugs fun was what I was trying to get at.
If you want to say that "use == abuse" and "all users are juvenile by definition" then get it over with so we don't waste time responding to you.
So I'm not a juvenile idiot (as evidenced by the fact that despite having "experimented" pretty liberally with pot and LSD at certain times in my life, I am not dead and not in jail), why should my toys be taken away? Just because Johnny Dumbass might be jealous that I still have my toys?
Doctors like the guy I knew in college (he was out) who counselled drug abusers and smoked dope in his free time?
I keep seeing this. Are *drugs* really the problem, or is the combination of drugs and the American eternally juvenile sensibility the problem? Drugs in combination with the drug war, perhaps?
I would like one person to actually articulate, without being insulting, without assuming that because a particular person is stupid and can't control his/her intake or know their limits that NONE of the rest of us can, what the "problem" is.
My experience is that alcohol is significantly harder to manage sensibly than marijuana or LSD. My personal research indicates that heroin and cocaine have risks associated that I will not tolerate, but they aren't as bad (in the ways commonly described) as the scare-mongers would have us believe--the risks in particular that I can't abide are ones that aren't commonly discussed.
Nonetheless, there were times in history where all these things were legal, and we have data to show that people were able to deal with their effects or can be left to pay the price for not dealing with them, so I don't see where the problem is.
The point? The way to use anything is with full disclosure of all the known risks and what can be done to mitigate them. If you find the benefits (which can be completely intangible) worth the risk, and you made an informed choice to take that risk, then you should be allowed to make the choice. (It's also worth noting that you then take the responsibility for dealing with said risks, and shouldn't come whining to Daddy Government to help you if you get bitten).
That said, the comparison to tobacco isn't very relevant, since the corporate powers that be have gone far out of their way to hide the risks. Any legalization effort should be made with the understanding that FULL information be provided about the substance in question, not just marketing crap.
I think that having learned how to handle one intoxicant (alcohol), you're pretty much ready to handle the others, as long as you have good information on how the effects differ, i.e. duration, symptoms, etc. Perhaps harder drugs or psychedelics need a different approach, but pot is ultimately very similar to alcohol overall.
damn, I just need to change society and I can cure cancer!
That's a societal issue, not a medical one. What's your point?
As for psychological addictions, let's see...cocaine...was widely accepted (despite some really major real dangers like the complete unpredictability of the effect of the same dose on the same person at the same purity on two different days; hey look, real medical facts!) for some time. But then we got cheap cocaine in the form of crack. There is NO chemical difference between crack and powder cocaine; crack is simply a concentrated form (you know, like those little frozen orange juice containers?). So in order to make it seem like it was SO MUCH WORSE the drug warriors started babbling about how addictive it was--in fact, cocaine is not addictive in the normal sense of alcohol & heroin, where you physically have to have it just to function "normally" once addicted, and crack is no more addictive than powder. Hence "psychological addiction" being used to justify the much more severe penalties for something that was the same drug.
As far as alcohol being "psychologically addictive", you obviously don't know what you're talking about, because alcohol is "physically addictive" not psychologically addictive. Your body comes to crave it and need it, and if it's withdrawn once your addiction is set, you have physical sickness (aka DT's etc) because of this.
I've read more about this topic, including the previous recommendations and medical and legal reviews of the facts than you seem to have bothered with.
You might note that I did not contradict you and claim that X doesn't destroy brain cells. Perhaps if you read something besides drug war propaganda (we return to the "lies, damn lies, and drug war statistics" comments) you'd be able to recognize when the medical journals are being influenced by hysteria instead of science. Here's another book for you: "Marihuana Reconsidered" by Dr. Lester Grinspoon, a respected Harvard Medical Researcher who set out to prove how bad pot was, and then found out it wasn't so bad after all. Hm, I wonder if we could do real unbiased research on X we might find that it's not so horrible either (even though it kills brain cells just like aging does)? Nah, that's just a pipe dream.
Of course I can filter pot just like people filter tobacco, and suddently it's not so cancerous. Or I can bake pot into brownies and other interesting food, and not take any smoke into my lungs at all. THC is not cancer causing.
I'm curious about your definition of "prove", and what specific statistics you're talking about. I'm sure your familiar with the quote about "lies, damn lies, and statistics". Given that the data I've seen indicate that drug consumption overall (including ALL drugs like alcohol etc) is pretty independant of drug war efforts, I'm skeptical about your "statistics" that claim to "prove" anything.
Also, it's worth noting that "psychological addiction" is a ridiculous bogeyman brought forward to justify draconian measures against drugs that couldn't otherwise be demonized very effectively. Hell, I'm "psychologically addicted" to chocolate, and it certainly doesn't do my health much good to scarf down a whole pint of Godiva Belgian Dark Chocolate ice cream in one sitting, but I haven't heard anyone screaming for the prohibition of that.
Please get some clues (there are a number of excellent books on these topics, in particular "Ain't Nobody's Business if You Do" by Peter McWilliams and "The Case for Legalizing Drugs" by Richard Lawrence Miller) before continuing to demonstrate your ignorance.
Hell, families are torn apart because Daddy's doing the college-age babysitter, but that doesn't mean we're going to make sex illegal any time soon.